Philosophy at 2 AM
by moonshadow2012
Summary: Sometimes you don't need someone to tell you it will be okay. Sometimes you need someone who will tell you what you don't want to hear in order for you to find out what you actually believe.


He honestly didn't know why he had a cellphone. If he wanted to contact someone, he would find them. Cellphones were wastes of time and money, not to mention the inconvenience of being called in the middle of the night. Or two in the morning. Which was the time that glared in red numbers from Ivan's bedside table, just beside the annoyingly loud sound from the vibrating device that cast a pale blue glow onto the ceiling.

Who would call him? Especially this late. Who would hold their lives at such a low value? Or…who wouldn't even consider the risk?

"You better have a very good reason for calling me, America." Ivan growled into the phone that disappeared in his fist.

Something that sounded an awful lot like sniffling crackled over the connection. "Yeah, uh, I don't really have any reason. Any good reason." America's voice was hoarse and devoid of his usual energy. That in and of itself was enough to make Ivan rub the sleep from his eyes and prop himself up on his elbows.

"What's going on?" he asked.

"Nothing, nothing." America sucked in a deep breath… _Alfred_ sucked in a deep breath and let it out, the rattle echoing through the phone. "I've just had a sucky day." The man shifted somewhere across the ocean. "Did you know that almost fifteen _million_ Americans suffer from depression?"

"No." Ivan replied honestly. "Is that troubling you?"

Alfred laughed bitterly. "I guess you could say that."

Silence stretched on long enough that Ivan had to remind himself who he was talking to. _Are you sure you're not Matthew?_ He almost asked.

"Can you hear them?" Alfred whispered.

"Who?" Ivan already knew, of course, but he didn't have an answer to the question the younger country was bound to ask.

"The people." America murmured. "All their voices. All the time. I don't know who I even _am_ anymore besides just a mass of voices."

"That _is_ all you are." Russia told him. "We're personifications of our countries. We're not real people like they are. We're many different people and voices with a destiny set by those voices. We don't have a choice. We're tied to what they decide. That's why we can hear them, I think. It's a small mercy. This way, we at least know what we're self-destructing for."

His voice was even. He'd lived with the reality much longer than America had. Maybe the man hadn't figured it all out yet. Whatever was wrong with America or Alfred, Ivan wasn't going to sugar-coat anything for him. The sooner he came to terms with his fate, the better.

"There was this guy Arthur liked to quote." Alfred sniffed again. "Aristotle. He said this one thing I thought was interesting; 'A whole is more than the sum of its parts.'"

Ivan studied the dark ceiling of his room.

"Do you believe that, Ivan?"

"Hm." Ivan sighed deeply. "You haven't used my name in decades, Mr. Jones." He could picture Alfred's wan smile at the stalling technique. "No." He replied finally. "I don't believe that."

"I do." Alfred said. "Or, at least, I try to. Sometimes I succeed. On good days."

"That's one reason I've always hated you." Ivan sighed. "You refuse to see things the way they actually are. The world is an ugly place full of people who made it that way."

"But it can also be beautiful." Alfred disagreed wistfully. "And people do try, no matter how many times they screw up. I think that's why I can't stop believing in them."

Ivan smiled despite himself. "You remind me of me." He said suddenly. "I used to think like that when I was your age."

"I thought so." Alfred didn't sound happy about it, and why should he? He'd spent half a century trying to prove that his ideals were above Ivan's. And now he had to face that he might _become_ Ivan someday.

Of course he had suspected. Alfred was much cleverer than the others gave him credit for. Ivan gave him credit, though. That was probably the reason he'd been able to compete with the fledgling superpower for so long. "You'll grow out of it." Ivan told him.

"Is that a challenge?" Alfred joked.

Ivan smirked. "It's not a challenge if you know you'll win."

"So it's only a challenge for you, then?"

Ivan smiled at the hints of the man he was used to. Still, something needed to be said. "Why me?"

"What do you mean?" Alfred asked.

"You know what I mean." The Russian wasn't going to let him get off that easy. He never had. "You could have called Kirkland or Williams or even Honda."

"Because…you're honest with me. You're the only one who is."

"What are you talking about?"

Alfred sighed a long, agonized sigh. "Everyone else…I've done terrible things to them. They've done terrible things to me, too, but that's not the point. The point is that they all act like we're still friends. Like nothing we did in the past matters. I don't trust those types of acting skills."

"You don't think they care about you."

"They don't."

"Your brothers don't care about you?" Ivan prompted.

"That's not what I meant. They…they _care_ , it's just that…I betrayed them, okay? I left both of them. I took every dream that Arthur had for me and threw it in the trash. I tried to force Matthew to follow me. They can't be okay with that. And I can't…I don't expect them to be. But right now I just needed to talk to someone who wasn't going to tell me it was going to be okay or pretend he doesn't hate me. Does that make any sense?"

"Unfortunately, yes."

For a long time, there was nothing but static in both sets of ears. It echoed through their skulls and partially numbed their minds.

"You know the worst part?" Alfred murmured. "It wasn't even me. It was the voices, the people inside of me that made me leave them. Like you said, I didn't have a choice. But if you're right and the voices are all we are…there was no choice in the first place, was there?"

"No." The elder Cold Warrior let his mind wander back to feelings from earlier in his long life. "God sets roles for all of us to play. We can't help but say our lines."

"I think God invented free will for a reason." The younger man murmured.

"Maybe." Once, a long time ago, Ivan had believed that with all his heart.

"I should let you get some sleep." Alfred said.

"Maybe." The other repeated.

"Thanks, Ivan."

He breathed once, heavily. "You're welcome, Alfred." He paused. "Good luck with the fifteen million."

"Thank you." He didn't just mean for the luck, and they both knew it.

In the dark, Ivan laid still, staring at the ceiling. He'd only gone to bed a few hours before, but somehow he wasn't tired anymore. He was thinking of everything that he was and everything that he once had been.

Maybe God had created an Alfred to replace an Ivan that was losing hope. Maybe that was the plan; to make sure that the idea of being more didn't fade with time and cynicism. Maybe there was some truth in the ideals like that. But if Alfred was who Ivan once was, who was Ivan now? A mentor? A guide? An enemy? He realized that those kinds of musings were rooted in Alfred's "more than the sum" idea, and he realized that it was hypocritical to think such things after so adamantly denying them. But still…

Alfred had been wrong about one thing, though. Ivan didn't hate him. He hated the possibility of having to watch his ally become his self.


End file.
